Statistics SA recently compared seasons in South Africa and how the prices of winter essentials changed since the first season of the popular show, Game of Thrones.

After Game of Thrones’ final season made its debut on 14 April 2019, Stats SA took to Twitter to show the comparisons. Just to give you an idea, Daenerys’ dragons were babies when Game of Thrones season 1 graced our screens back in 2011:

HBO/YouTube

The essentials for watching Game of Thrones:

According to Stats SA, wine is 36.6% more expensive than it was back in 2011. And as characters tend to die constantly on Game of Thrones, the price of tissues also took a knock:

“Shedding a tear for your favourite character will set you back R17.96 per [tissue] box this season as tissue prices increased by 13% from season 1,” reads Stats SA’s tweet.

A new blanket is up 17.3% from season 1, and the average price of a television set increased by 43.3%.

Winter time is also said to be the cheapest time to actually buy a decoder as prices dropped by 19.3% since Game of Thrones‘ first season.

South African fans of the show can catch Game of Thrones on M-Net, DStv channel 101 at 03:00 on Sunday mornings or 22:00 on Monday nights or on Showmax.

Expected ratings:

In 2017, the Game of Thrones Season 7 finale clocked in a rating high with 16.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.

According to Variety, that number includes people who watched the episode as it aired and night-of streams.

The linear ratings alone put the series at 12.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched episode in series history. The 12.1 million number also represents a 36% increase over the Season 6 finale, which drew 8.9 million viewers in 2016.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones is expected to succeed these statistics. Season 7 of Game of Thrones already averaged 30.6 million viewers, up nearly 8 million viewers from the same point since Season 6.